I've always wondered... has this ever really been touched on? Does the city even have a name? There are always several buildings and such on Oa (and now Mogo), generally around the Central Battery. While I can understand some of them are barracks for new Lanterns, gyms, mess halls, Sciencells, Guardians' chambers, etc... what about the rest? Guy had the Big W Bar and Grill with an alien staff of non-Lanterns. Was there more stuff like that? Other alien non-Lanterns living on Oa with day jobs, places to eat, perhaps places to blow off steam? Maybe survivors of universe wide annihilation are offered a home there?

Like this, what's all of this about?

Even military bases, at least from my knowledge of them here in the US, are like smaller cities with stores, fast food places, etc. Do you think it's about time they got into it with this city/military type base? Or am I the only one that thinks about stuff like this? There's so much potential in this it's ridiculous. Maybe there's more than one city on Oa?

So... has there ever been anything in the comics? I'm not as familiar with the stuff prior to vol. 3, but I am curious if they've ever tried developing it before.

This is just another example of Green Lantern's piss poor world building. Instead of building things that actually matter, like this, the franchise would rather build things like various redundant Lantern Corps, which also seem to populate mostly empty planets, and which also seem to have little to no infrastructure, and often no real mission statement. It's really sad, in my opinion, when you consider how long the franchise has been around.

Also, no I don't think we really know what that city is about, or who really lives there. Though, the Green Lanterns did take in the inhabitants of the Last City in Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion, so I suppose some of it is them... maybe? There's been no mention of any of that stuff since it happened, and there was a city on Oa LOOOONG before that, so I dunno'.

I know a writer shouldn't explain every little thing, and it is actually good to allow room for a reader's mind to speculate, but this ever present mysterious city is a rather glaring thing, in my opinion.

As far as the name, I'm fairly certain it's never been referred to as anything but Oa, so I took it like Coruscant (but with more uninhabited landmass).

I used to wander about all those buildings. Pre-Crisis, it often looked busy as though more than GLs were around. Presumably a massive infrastructure like that would require a massive support system, which would include civilians (and many civilians do work US military bases---I personally know three just in my limited circles). If it's like the UN and a prison, you'd expect ambassadors and lawyers to be frequent visitors. Plus people just showing up to ask for help.

Or Maybe the GotU just liked things spacious. At it's peak, there were over 7,200 GLs+ GotU. Look how much space they use for just the Book of Oa.

I don't think any writer or artist has taken the time to think it through at any time since 1959. It doesn't take more than two seconds of thought to realize that Oa is largely uninhabited, and that everything the GLs need is centrally located in one small city. And even calling it a city is a stretch. At any point there has been between 1 and 7,200 Corps members, and 1 to 36 Guardians. That's a small town, camp or colony. To me it was always one small city set up on the planet and everything else was barren desert. If Oa was real you wouldn't have architecture all over the planet, everything you need would be clustered together in one area with a small central city at the heart of it. I always pictured everything being no larger than say Providence RI. Even making it like New York City seems excessive and largely unused.

I would like to see Oa restored to it's former glory and some more thought put into it. Geoff Johns and Steve Englehart are the two writers that come to mind that arguably put more thought into fleshing Oa's inner workings out than anyone else. I'd like to see someone build off of what they did logically to world build and define it for readers.

I don't think any writer or artist has taken the time to think it through at any time since 1959. It doesn't take more than two seconds of thought to realize that Oa is largely uninhabited, and that everything the GLs need is centrally located in one small city. And even calling it a city is a stretch. At any point there has been between 1 and 7,200 Corps members, and 1 to 36 Guardians. That's a small town, camp or colony. To me it was always one small city set up on the planet and everything else was barren desert. If Oa was real you wouldn't have architecture all over the planet, everything you need would be clustered together in one area with a small central city at the heart of it. I always pictured everything being no larger than say Providence RI. Even making it like New York City seems excessive and largely unused.

I would like to see Oa restored to it's former glory and some more thought put into it. Geoff Johns and Steve Englehart are the two writers that come to mind that arguably put more thought into fleshing Oa's inner workings out than anyone else. I'd like to see someone build off of what they did logically to world build and define it for readers.

I think 7,200 GL's, the limited number of Guardians, and an alien non-Lantern community living in the city on Oa would be something to really dive into and wish a writer would do something with it. Maybe they can name the city after one of the Guardians of the past? IDK.

I think they also need to find a look and settle with it. The different takes on Oa are pretty different. Pre Crisis most of the buildings were generally yellow, post-Crisis we got a new look with each artist, the movie had a stone central battery, and everything in the animated series looked like a futuristic world without anything on the actual surface and everything seemingly floating in the sky.

Back in Mosaic days, there obviously WAS mostly empty space on the planet Oa, since they had plenty of room to transplant a bunch of alien cities to it. The Guardians lived and operated in a relatively small collection of buildings which didn't really constitute a "city", but more of a "citadel".